NEW DATA AVAILABLE ON DATA DASHBOARD

New data is now available on the Zero
Youth Detention Data Dashboard. We launched the Data Dashboard last year to
share regular updates on the juvenile legal system in King County.

WHERE YOU’LL SEE
UPDATES

This update shows new data for the first quarter of 2019,
and also reflects updates to previously-shared 2018 data.

In November 2017, King County Executive Constantine signed
an Executive Order authorizing all young people under 18 who had been charged
as adults to be held at the Youth Services Center in Seattle, rather than in
the adult Regional Justice Center. This Executive Order included transferring
all young people under 18 who were previously held at the adult facility to the
juvenile facility. These young people were transferred to the juvenile facility
in late 2017, but data on these young people only recently became available.
Therefore, we’ve updated the 2018 data in the Data Dashboard to reflect these
additional young people being held in juvenile detention.

As a result of these additional youth, when you’re looking at graphs on the Data Dashboard, you’ll see an increase in the number of youth in secure detention in 2018, and an increase in some racial disparities in 2018. This increase does not reflect more young people being detained in 2018 compared to previous years; instead, this uptick represents the addition of young people who had previously been housed in the adult facility.

The number
ofyoung people in detention dropped,
from 52.7 young people on average per day in 2018 to 44.2 on average per day in
the first quarter of 2019.

The overall
number of youth of color in detention also dropped in Q1 2019 compared to
2018. However, youth of color and youth who are Native continue to be
over-represented in secure detention. While young people (ages 10-17) who are black
make up 10% of the King County youth population, they represent over 50% of
young people in secure detention. This is why we
are leading with racial equity.

One objective of Zero Youth Detention is
diverting youth involved in the legal system to the least restrictive
environment based on their individual needs. One of the ways we’ve done this is
to expand the use of “alternatives to secure detention,” such as electronic
monitoring. The overall number of young people in any type of detention
decreased in Q1 2019 compared to 2018, and the proportion of those youth in “alternatives to secure detention”
continued to increase, aligning with our ongoing efforts at diverting youth
from secure detention.

The
Data Dashboard is a work in progress. We’ll be updating it regularly as new data become
available and we launch additional strategies to reach the goal of Zero Youth
Detention.